Outriders is out now for players everywhere. If you're a fan of original sci-fi RPGs and/or looter-shooters, you'll want to check out the new, highly anticipated title from Square Enix and People Can Fly sooner than later. Not only is there a lot of content to mine and gear to grind for, there's a rather compelling mystery at the heart of the all-out action exploding on the surface of the alien planet Enoch. I'll break it all down for you below, so this is your chance to bow out of this article now, pick up the game, and play its story, side missions, and endgame, because spoilers follow.
But before we take a deep dive into the lore of Outriders, here's the official synopsis to refresh your memory and give you a baseline point of reference:
Enoch was meant to be a fresh start... yet now you're stuck on a hostile planet that considers you prey. Mankind might be on the backfoot, but it's up to you to push forward. You do not run. You do not hide. You are an Outrider.
Outriders is a 1-3 player co-op RPG shooter set in an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe. As mankind bleeds out in the trenches of Enoch, you’ll create your own Outrider and embark on a journey across the hostile planet.
If you played the demo or have just started in on Outriders, you've probably made your way through the prologue that this synopsis sets up. (If not, last warning; here's where your spoilers start.) Yes, the last vestiges of Earth's human civilization have arrived on Enoch, a habitable alien world, but it's not long before the final hope for humankind is brought to the brink of extinction.
Outriders starts out positively enough: Your protagonist, believe it or not, is a member of the Outriders, a group of specialists hired to be the first boots on the ground of the alien planet dubbed Enoch. This team was assembled by the Enoch Colonization Authority (E.C.A.) as humanity's vanguard, a forward force that would protect the colonists from launch to arrival, should anything go wrong along the way. (Spoiler: It does.) At the start of the game, a colony ship named the S.M. Flores waits in orbit above Enoch while you and your fellow Outriders, commanded by Sergeant Major Charles Maxell and led by Captain Jack Tanner, set up a base camp for the thousands of colonists waiting in cryosleep. But neither the Outriders team themselves nor Enoch is what it appears to be at first blush.
These Outriders have been cobbled together from various mercenary forces who were hired after the Flores' sister ship, the Caravel, exploded, killing almost all 8,000 Outriders on board. The somewhat unsavory nature of the new Outriders is actually both good and bad: Good, because these rough-and-tumble fighters are necessary for the incredibly hostile world humanity has stumbled into, and bad, because we've also brought the worst that humanity had to offer with us to another world. Worse still, Enoch has some terrible secrets to reveal that will absolutely mean the end of the human race ... unless you can stop it.
It's not long before the just-landed Outriders face a pair of extinction-level events: First, a deadly black fungus in the nearby forest kills just about everyone who happens to breathe in the spores. (And anyone who survives is soon exterminated on Maxwell's orders, to prevent further spread of the disease.) Second, a sudden and cataclysmic storm breaks, a mysterious anomaly that spreads across the surface of Enoch faster than they can outrun it. Whoever gets caught up in its path is brutally torn apart, though there is the ~0.003% who survive and are "Altered" by it, granted near immortality and incredible powers. Surprise, surprise, your player character is one such lucky duck, though a near-fatal injury forces a cohort of yours to put you back in cryosleep in order to save your life. And so, 31 years pass with you and your character none the wiser.
You awake to a very different world than the one you left. Enoch has become a warzone. The E.C.A., in a struggle over dwindling resources, internal falling out, and external pressures, has become locked into bloody and endless combat against a group known as Insurgents or Exiles. While the E.C.A. may have superior technology and defenses, the Insurgents are martialed by other incredibly powerful Altered. So your arrival on the side of the E.C.A. and your former colleagues comes as a welcome surprise to all of your new allies. And thus begins your battle for the survival of the human race, your journey across the varied lands of Enoch, and your discovery of secrets long held, including the mystery of a broadcast signal out somewhere in the wilds and those that have existed since well before your arrival.
Quite a bit of story and character development fills in the second act of Outriders. It's here that I encourage players to take things slowly, seek out side missions and supporting characters, and talk to everyone you can. Not only does it round out the edges of the sci-fi story and deepen the lore, it'll help you stay on pace with the progressing World Tier. But while I fully expected the supposed looter-shooter to end its main campaign with the conflict between the E.C.A. and the Insurgents, I was thrilled to find out that its central story went much, much deeper into the wilds of Enoch. Again, major spoilers ahead.
Along the way, you meet the first big surprise of the game, embodied by a character named August. August, or Agst as the captions call them, is an androgynous humanoid character who's actually an Enochian. That's right. This alien world isn't inhabited only by savage beasts and war-mongering human invaders, it features its own sentient civilization ... or at least, it used to. August seems to be the last of their people, a people who had an innate attunement to the mysterious anomaly and maybe even a way to control or redirect its deadly energies, as their pictographic history implies. Your group's discovery of August and the ancient ruins of their people, including mysterious obelisks that apparently channel the anomaly's energy from deep beneath the surface, add a whole other level to Outriders. But with every twist and turn comes a chance for humanity to show their absolute worst.
August is being held captive by Dr. Spurlock when you find them, seen only as a research specimen. The not-so-good doctor continues to produce a serum (composed of tree sap and bone marrow / spinal fluid from not-so-willing donors) as an antidote to the black fungus. After your character executes Spurlock (a bang-bang narrative moment that's part and parcel in Outriders' storytelling), other well-meaning folks in his enclave figure out a way to keep everyone immune to the fungus by less deadly but no less disgusting means. This frees you and your group, including August and his human friend Tiago, to further investigate Enoch beyond the massive and ancient gate at the border of known human exploration. What lies beyond is, well, the third and final act of Outriders.
It turns out that other Enochian humanoids do exist, and they're hostile AF. They're dubbed the Ferals, which isn't super imaginative but it is evocative enough when you learn that August's people are referred to as the Pax. But you soon discover that the Ferals and the Pax are one and the same. August uses his innate powers to tap into the anomaly and transform into a powerful but primitive Feral in order to save Tiago from certain death, only to attack Tiago in turn. Your character is forced to execute August, which is one of the more heart-breaking moments in the whole story. But why would August turn Feral, you ask? And why did all of the Pax choose to do so?
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Those questions lead to the biggest reveals of the story: Despite the destruction of the Caravel on Earth, it was repaired with a more advanced engine after the M.S. Flores left Earth's orbit. It was captained by a man named Monroy, a grizzled survivor who holds a grudge against his fellow Outriders for leaving them behind on a dying Earth. It turns out that the new Caravel's engines were superior even to that of the Flores, allowing Monroy and his people to reach Enoch even before your character did. (Not time-travel exactly, or wormhole physics, as far as we know; the ship merely could have been significantly faster to arrive there first.) And it's Monroy's "Colonel Kurtz"-like turn that sets the events of Outriders in motion.
Monroy's people made contact with the Pax first, well on the other side of the ancient gate. But as Monroy learned of the Pax's powers and their enhanced abilities from an attunement with the anomaly, he became envious and paranoid. He ordered the peaceful Pax to be slaughthered with only a relative few left alive to be enslaved as labor in resource camps and research labs. (Pretty typical human behavior, yeah?) The Pax who resisted turned themselves Feral in order to repel the invaders and destroy Monroy's forces. And while the forest's black fungus may simply be an extension of the alien world's biome, the anomaly storms that wreak havoc across Enoch are caused by the Pax/Feral themselves, thanks to Monroy's own evil intentions. So the storm that savaged the Outriders and caused a rift between members of the E.C.A. was initially caused by Monroy forcing the Pax to extreme measures, resorting to creation of the storm by the Feral chieftain Yagak. But that storm also created something new: The Altered. You.
So after a crew member dispatches Monroy without troubling with a trial or bringing him back for colonial justice, you only have to take down Yagak, an incredibly powerful storm-summoner, who acts as the final boss. Having bested him and his forces (which is honestly not a walk in the park, even on World Tier I), you learn that your team was able to send an uplink signal to the waiting Flores. This causes supply drop pods to fire off of the colony ship and land on Enoch. The issue is, other denizens of the alien world see these supply pods landing, too. Those include E.C.A. commander Shira and your other questionable allies like Corrigan, but also enemies you should have already defeated, like the insane Moloch and, you guessed it, Yagak. All of them will go after the supply drop pods, including you, and that's the root of Outriders endgame Expeditions.
Phew! That's a lot of lore, and I left out a ton of insane nuts and bolts along the way. I absolutely recommend exploring as much of the story as you can instead of just rushing to endgame. To each their own, but the story of Outriders is very much worth your time. And I love that the end of the main campaign makes perfect sense as it dovetails into endgame expeditions, with supply drop pods acting as a sort of currency for yet more loot loops. So even if the ultimate test, Eye of the Storm, is more of a gauge of player builds and teamwork than anything else, the overall story is quite cohesive.
Outriders' ending also leaves the door open for more story to come. Your character and your motley group are the new leaders of human survivors of Enoch who seek an end to the endless war and a path towards peace and, hopefully, colonization; that was the Outriders' mission, remember. Could we see those ideas actually bear fruit in future installments? Could we actually set up our own base that we get to develop and expand instead of being a roaming warrior without a place to call their own? Could we explore more of the varied biomes of Enoch and find out yet more secrets waiting to be discovered? With a start like this, I hope Outriders as we know it is just the beginning.